Developer Interview - Ion Hazzikostas

[leorana]

Congratulations, you've successfully created The Great Vault.

Your version provides more loot, for sure, but they specifically said they want players to have less loot, because players bitched about loot not feeling "special" when they got a lot of loot.

The great vault is a step in the right direction to help players target an actual upgrade. Let's agree (just for argument sake) that those complaining about too much loot aren't completely idiots, but not getting loot for entire lockout (s) isn't fun either. There's a slight difference between I didn't get any loot for weeks and That damm BIS trinket didn't drop the entire patch (but overall I did get something)

[Revamp Man]

If there wasn't a problem, they wouldn't have spent time and money on changing it.

really??

Because they changed stuff that wasnt an issue in the game before and reversed it because they realized they were wrong. They also said something wasnt an issue and changed it once the players spent months pointing out that it was a problem.

[leorana]

Uhhh, no Ion. Covenants aren't balanced. There is a clear optimal choice, and in the case of my monk it's above a 1% difference.

Disappointed he doesn't even acknowledge players have wanted flight whistle back for a while now

ohhh! Flight whistle! How could I forget about that. This is one of the first (and easiest) things they should do. The 'wormhole' fast animation isn't fooling anyone either...fp takes even longer now, which is the same as no mount in the maw BS

[Revamp Man]

This masterloot thing is so dumb, just let it die. It makes no sense that someone who gets lucky should somehow be forced to cancel out another persons bad luck. That feels shit to them and this stuff is always abused by officers or informed by guild politics to some degree. Raids can be balanced around personal loot instead of masterloot so any perceived raid performance increase by "perfect distribution" is purely illusory anyway.

the developers can not say they are better at distributing loot in my group than i am

personal loot wouldnt even be much of an issue if they didnt have the retarded ilvl restriction because they "dont want players feeling pressured to trade loot"
If i have 5 trials in a raid and we are on farm boss 3 for the 3rd month and we get a BiS drop for one of them its going to the trial. If we are on a boss and a piece of loot drops taht is a downgrade for the trial but a slight upgrade for a member i am going to give it to the member...then the trial bitches for the rest of the night because they are too dumb to realize that the loot they have is already better and then they complain that they never get loot even though for farm Trials get a ton of loot because the main raid has already geared through those bosses.

I also get told by blizz "you cant trade that gear because its a 1 ilvl increase" on gear taht is a downgrade for me but a huge upgrade for a guildie.

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Well, you kind of have to assume that it was a big enough issue that they would rather remove it than deal with CS tickets asking for loot drama intervention.

no i assume it was a change made to appease the overall community perception. "trials deserve loot too" is something that everyone agrees with and wasnt an actual issue for a vast vast majority of players once legion added the guild group requirement. Trials get loot from farm bosses and loot that otherwise isnt an upgrade for the guys that killed that boss. A new trial that comes into a boss in progression on pull 34 and kills it does not have any right to complain if the BiS trinket goes to the officer that was there every pull and didnt die 15 times. On average a trial would get at least 2 pieces of loot in even a half clear of most raids with farm content and things like a pair of gloves dropping but the others that can use it had better.

I never ran into a situation where a trial never got loot through their entire trial process and a majority of the stories on the forums were debunked in the same thread. Example my trial week i got 3 upgrades and it wasnt even farm simply because it wasnt really an upgrade for others due to tier and crap. A trial did complain when they didnt get a trinket that was an actual downgrade even though they got 2 pieces the night before and the reasoning with them was "its better for the raid" even though it was a huge downgrade.

[Ringthane]

hmmm, tiers sets are coming back? ... hmmm... shall I resub?

I wouldn't - the rest of it is so boring and dull I'd rather watch paint dry. I've been playing since Classic and I've never felt more like "why am I doing this and why should I care what happens" than I have with this expansion.

[Drusin]

Old raids might be a little harder at max level now, but part of that is from your stats going down as you level. Things should get better as you get more gear and Soulbinds. Eventually your player power will exceed what it was at the end of the last expansion.

Yeah because that makes perfect fucking sense. If there were no squish there wouldn't have been a problem. Legion would have been 110 and we'd be 125 or 130 and life would be great, so the next time a squish gets mentioned I'll be sure no one forgets

[Stickiler]

really??

Because they changed stuff that wasn't an issue in the game before and reversed it because they realized they were wrong. They also said something wasnt an issue and changed it once the players spent months pointing out that it was a problem.

Neither thing you said disagrees with me.

For the first: Just because you don't believe it's an issue with the game, doesn't mean they don't see issues with it internally.

For the second: The design team can believe that something isn't an issue, but then re-evaluate it and change their minds when players point out scenarios or situations where it definitely is an issue.

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The great vault is a step in the right direction to help players target an actual upgrade. Let's agree (just for argument sake) that those complaining about too much loot aren't completely idiots, but not getting loot for entire lockout (s) isn't fun either. There's a slight difference between I didn't get any loot for weeks and That damm BIS trinket didn't drop the entire patch (but overall I did get something)

Except the great vault absolutely guarantees that you'll receive a piece of loot each lockout(Any loot from the vault is included as loot for the previous week, for the sake of this argument), no matter what. The only situation where you don't get any loot is: You kill <3 raid bosses, did zero M+, and received <1250 honor from rated PvP.

The question of whether that gear is useful is separate to the discussion about receiving no loot at all.

[Prag]

The dungeon damage difference between my Prot Pala and Prot War is pretty significant, but the tradeoff is definitely in ST where it seems to all balance out. I'm not sure how they bring Prot Pala in line without capping abilities (which feels like absolute shit) or nerfing DT (which means I'm just going Ven'thyr).

[Valkaneer]

There has been a lot of feedback across the community from people who found picking a Covenant hard.

Not because they were good, but because they were bad. The only covenant I find worthy of joining is Necro, and the Necro abilities are so bad that you are seriously shooting yourself in the foot. The other choices are, "The Slave Labor Union", "Some need to die for the good of the many", or "Don't trust us farther than you can throw us".

Ya, great choices there, that is a hard choice....... /endsarcasm

[Goat7]

Forgot professions. Most are dog poo. Prolly why they didnt talk about it

[hulkgor]

Great fun so far.

Well done Mr Hazzikostas, looking forward to what's coming next.

[Nzx]

I haven't really got any problem with any of this personally, but I do find the line about legendary changes "being on the PTR, lots of time for feedback" being said on literally the same day they hotfix nerf a legendary pretty funny

[Tesshin20]

that "masterloot caused problems especially for trials" is BS and you know it Ion
Trials got plenty of loot from farm content just because Timmy lost the BiS trinket from a progression boss where he was in 5% of the pulls and died 30 seconds into the fight to Chad the officer who has been there every night and always performs well doesnt mean theres a problem.

They are the ones who get the feedback. They know this better than your anecdotal personal experience.

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Not because they were good, but because they were bad. The only covenant I find worthy of joining is Necro, and the Necro abilities are so bad that you are seriously shooting yourself in the foot. The other choices are, "The Slave Labor Union", "Some need to die for the good of the many", or "Don't trust us farther than you can throw us".

Ya, great choices there, that is a hard choice....... /endsarcasm

Wrong. They are quite balanced as you add the soulbinds to the mix.

- - - Updated - - -

the developers can not say they are better at distributing loot in my group than i am

personal loot wouldnt even be much of an issue if they didnt have the retarded ilvl restriction because they "dont want players feeling pressured to trade loot"
If i have 5 trials in a raid and we are on farm boss 3 for the 3rd month and we get a BiS drop for one of them its going to the trial. If we are on a boss and a piece of loot drops taht is a downgrade for the trial but a slight upgrade for a member i am going to give it to the member...then the trial bitches for the rest of the night because they are too dumb to realize that the loot they have is already better and then they complain that they never get loot even though for farm Trials get a ton of loot because the main raid has already geared through those bosses.

I also get told by blizz "you cant trade that gear because its a 1 ilvl increase" on gear taht is a downgrade for me but a huge upgrade for a guildie.

- - - Updated - - -



no i assume it was a change made to appease the overall community perception. "trials deserve loot too" is something that everyone agrees with and wasnt an actual issue for a vast vast majority of players once legion added the guild group requirement. Trials get loot from farm bosses and loot that otherwise isnt an upgrade for the guys that killed that boss. A new trial that comes into a boss in progression on pull 34 and kills it does not have any right to complain if the BiS trinket goes to the officer that was there every pull and didnt die 15 times. On average a trial would get at least 2 pieces of loot in even a half clear of most raids with farm content and things like a pair of gloves dropping but the others that can use it had better.

I never ran into a situation where a trial never got loot through their entire trial process and a majority of the stories on the forums were debunked in the same thread. Example my trial week i got 3 upgrades and it wasnt even farm simply because it wasnt really an upgrade for others due to tier and crap. A trial did complain when they didnt get a trinket that was an actual downgrade even though they got 2 pieces the night before and the reasoning with them was "its better for the raid" even though it was a huge downgrade.

Oh believe me. People should trust Blizzard a lot more handing out loot than you. I would say with 99% confidence that you have a lot more subjective feelings into handing out loot, than Blizzard have, which will distort your ability to hand out loot in an objective manner.

[Razorice]

Really enjoyed the interview.

Also, take a drink everytime Ion says "Systems".

[huldu]

What the... Torghast is garbage. You get nothing beside soul ash. If I had an actual choice I wouldn't even do it because I find it that bad. How about you start giving some gear from it or add it to the great vault.

[Sorrior]

"eventually your player power will exceed what it used to be in the end of the last expansion...." .

Sorry, fail to see the logic where I leveled 10 levels only to be weaker than I used to be on old content. Just fix this please.

This right here it makes NO sense at all that we are weaker then before..like seriously how the f do they even think this makes sense

[doodle90]

Wow "Old raids werent scaling at lvl 60 now thats fixed" Shows he has no clue. The raids literally one shot you at 60 still. If they don't buff it you wont be able to solo legion content till like 9.4

[leorana]

Wow "Old raids werent scaling at lvl 60 now thats fixed" Shows he has no clue. The raids literally one shot you at 60 still. If they don't buff it you wont be able to solo legion content till like 9.4

I wish that was the case, but I was soloing legion raids as 110 in mediocre bfa gear. Presumably, legion raids are harder now so fact is we actually got weaker due to the squish.

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What the... Torghast is garbage. You get nothing beside soul ash. If I had an actual choice I wouldn't even do it because I find it that bad. How about you start giving some gear from it or add it to the great vault.

/Agreed.
Going almost full hour for higher layers just to get 70 soul ash feels like it ain't worth the effort. Put a chest in the end of it like visions and it would feel much more rewarding.

[kamuimac]

"small fires"

people are leaving the game left and right because pvers have 0 way of progressing their chars outside of raiding/vault - but everything is ok

called it back then calling it now - its WoD 2.0 catered only to raiders - because there is 0 point in doing anything then raid atm .

[shadowmatrix]

What the... Torghast is garbage. You get nothing beside soul ash. If I had an actual choice I wouldn't even do it because I find it that bad. How about you start giving some gear from it or add it to the great vault.

So players can then start whining that they are forced to run it? Oh wait, some already are.